Just a Small Absence

Oops. Well I haven't been here in quite a while. Life has been quite manic. We were lucky enough to go on a two week holiday. A self catered road trip through Victoria which was a lot of fun and incredibly exhausting. We came home to a busy time of school fête and a mass of baking for the cake stall, followed by everyone getting sick, suddenly realising I had less than 2 weeks to plan a birthday party and a weekend away visiting friends. Blogging has definitely been on the back burner and inspiration has been kind of lacking.

But I now have a bunch of things to post including tonight's dinner.

This is a surprisingly summery dish which can be so difficult with failsafe food. It really works better in winter, so it's nice to be able to not eat roast dinner or casseroles or mashed potato in the warmer months.

San Choy Bow
Serves 4
Ingredients

• 1tsp Failsafe oil
• 500g beef mince (or chicken)
• 3 cloves garlic 
• 1/2 leek cut into about 6 lengthwise pieces and then sliced finely
• 1/2 a swede, grated
• 1/2 celery stick cut finely
• 1/4 choko cut into small pieces
• mung bean sprouts
• 2 shallots sliced on an angle (including some of the green bits)
• 1tbsp golden syrup
• 1tbsp 'lemon' juice
• 1tsp salt (or to taste)
• rice vermicelli soaked and cut into bit sized pieces(I used one block from the Changs brand packs)
• lettuce leaves for serving

Method

1. heat oil in a large frying pan over medium to high heat. Add leeks and garlic and stir fry until softened
2. Add mince and stir fry, when the mince is partially cooked add the swede.
3. When the mince looks cooked and there is very little liquid left add the celery and choko. Stir fry until softened
4. Add golden syrup, 'lemon' and salt and stir through well.
5. turn off heat, mix noodles through the meat.
6. Spoon into lettuce cups, place some sprouts and shallot on top
7. Serve and then roll up and eat.

Options
Salicylates - Add a finely chopped or grated carrot and/or some ginger and coriander

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Never!

My son like crêpes. He really likes crêpes. I'm could probably fill one with brussel sprouts and he'd gobble it up. Well, maybe that's going a bit too far. He likes them for breakfast the most. His favourite thing to have on them are 'lemon' juice and sugar. I find this a little boring and have made a really lovely filling that would work for breakfast or dessert and there are a few more things you could do for non-failsafe family members or guests who join you for brunch.

We had these crêpes on the weekend just gone. It was the long weekend, so theoretically we had unlimited time to spend making breakfast. Batter was made, batter was resting, filling was gently simmering on the stove, I started to cook the crêpes and suddenly everything stopped. We had run out of gas! That has never happened before. We are not connected to town gas, but have two enormous cylinders that are solely for the cook top. They do nothing else and last forever. We have been here nearly six years and have only needed one replaced in all that time. But alas, we were out of gas.

Out comes the trusty old electric frypan that I haven't used in years and almost threw away recently. Thank goodness I didn't because we won't have gas until Wednesday. It took ages to cook the crêpes one at a time on that thing and the filling was finished off in the microwave.

This is the same basic crêpe recipe that I have posted previously.

Basic Crêpe Recipe

Ingredients

• 250g plain gluten free flour
• pinch of salt
• 1tsp sugar
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• 410ml (1 2/3cup) milk of choice - I used rice milk
• 125ml (1/2cup) water
• 1tbsp melted nuttelex
• Failsafe oil for frying.

Method

1. Sift flour, sugar and salt into a bowl and make a well in the centre.
2. Mix the eggs, milk and water together and pour slowly into the well.
3. Whisk until everything is incorporated and you have a reasonably smooth batter.
4. Stir in melted nuttelex. Cover and stand for at least 20mins.
5. Heat a crêpe pan or medium sized non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Wipe or spray with a little oil. 
6. Pour in enough batter to thinly coat the base of the pan (a soup ladle was pretty spot on for my pan), tipping it around to get it to the edges.When the crêpe starts to lift away at the edges give it a gentle shake so it comes loose and turn and cook on the other side for a minute of two. They should be slightly golden.

Stack on a plate (you could put baking paper between them to make sure they don't stick, although mine didn't stick together) and cover with foil until they are all done. They can be frozen with paper between them.


I had previously made this filling on Fathers Day, just so there was something else that my boy could eat, and it was just so good. The smell alone is drool worthy.


Vanilla Pears


Ingredients

• 3 ripe pears, peeled, cored and chopped into smallish pieces (roughly 1cm cubes) or use tinned pears in syrup.
• 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
• 1 cup of water (or if you use tinned pears you could substitute part of this for some syrup)
• 3cm piece of vanilla bean, split lengthwise.

Method

1. Put sugar, water and vanilla into a saucepan over medium heat
2. Stir until the sugar dissolves and mixture comes to the boil
3. Simmer until the syrup reduces by about a quarter.
4. Add pears and simmer until they are soft.
5. Spoon into crêpes and fold over.

 

Sweet and caramely and fragrant with vanilla

Variations
Have 'lemon' juice and sugar or just pure maple syrup or golden syrup.
Salicylates - Add a small piece of cinnamon stick to the pot. Or fill with fresh strawberries and maple syrup.
Dairy - Serve with big dollops of whipped cream or ice cream
Amines - Place some broken up good quality dark chocolate on half of the crêpe while it is still in the pan. When the chocolate starts to melt fold crêpe into quarters and serve. I have incredibly fond memories of eating crêpes au chocolat noir while wandering around Paris at midnight.

If you are having visitors you could put all the different fillings into bowls on the table and let everyone help themselves.

crêpe au chocolat noir

Strawberries, maple syrup and whipped cream

Ooh la la!

Or in english "I say, that is a lot of garlic!"

This is another french dish which I absolutely love and my son loves it too. There is so much garlic, but after being roasted it is all soft and sweet and just delicious. You can serve it with your favourite bread or with mash and veg to make a big meal out it. My son is currently challenging gluten, so I made an unbelievably good spelt baguette to go with it which I will post soon. It is a really simple meal to make and great for when you are having guests because you can just put it in the oven and not do anything else until it it is done.

Once again this recipe is adapted from a french cook book that I own.

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Ingredients

• 1 chicken, skinned, approx 1.6kg (if you want to serve 4 people)
• 2 celery stalks, including leaves
• 40 cloves of garlic, unpeeled (take off the thin papery skins, but leave on the inner thick one)
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 large leek, cut into about 4 chunks
• 1 1/2 cups of home made chicken stock (or water, but if you use water add another chunk of leek and celery)
• 4 springs parsley

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 200℃
2. Put a chopped celery stalk, sprig of parsley and 6 garlic cloves into the chicken cavity. Tie the legs together. Brush with oil and season with salt.
3. Put 10 cloves of garlic in the bottom of a casserole dish, along with the rest of the parsley, a chopped celery stick and the leek.
4. Put the chicken in the dish. Add the remaining garlic around the chicken and pour over the stock (or water) and what is left of the oil.
5. Cover and bake for 1hour and 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked and the juices run clear.
6. Lift out the chicken and strain the liquid into a saucepan. Reserve all the garlic.
7. Boil the liquid for a few minutes to reduce it slightly
8. Cut the chicken into serving portions (good kitchen scissors make this job easy), pour over the juices and scatter with garlic. Serve with bread or veg (the garlic is particularly good spread over bread).

Variations
Amines - leave the skin on the chicken.
Salicylates - Add 4 sprigs of thyme, 2 of rosemary and a roughly chopped carrot to the pot.
You could also use chicken pieces instead of a whole chicken (for example if you only like breast or if you can't be bothered to cut up a whole one). Cooking time will come down to 45mins - 1hour depending on the size of the pieces.

The best things in life are free...

... Free of gluten, free of dairy and free of all those nasty chemicals that make life in this house not fun.

This pie is free of all those things and it's so good that your guests won't even know it.

Without further ado I give you the gluten free, dairy free, soy free, lemon free-

Lemon Meringue Pie!

This is an amalgamation of several recipes that I adapted and put together for this.
The pastry is the same that I used for the pear tart. I will put it here again, though, to save you having to go look for it. 


Sweet pastry
Ingredients

• 340g gluten free plain flour
• a small pinch of salt
• 150g nuttelex
• 90g icing sugar
• 2 eggs beaten

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180℃
2. Sift flour, salt and sugar into the bowl of a food processor add the nuttelex and pulse until the nuttelex is incorporated and you have something resembling bread crumbs.
3. Add the eggs with the motor running and process until a dough starts to form.
4. Tip out onto some cling wrap, knead into a ball, wrap and put in the fridge for at least an hour.
5. Roll the pastry between sheets of baking paper and line a 23cm loose based tart tin, trimming the edges.
6. Line with baking paper and fill with baking weights or dried beans or rice.
7. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove beads and paper and bake for a further 4 minutes or until the pastry is just cooked, but still pale.

The Filling
This makes a thin layer of lemon filling, approximately 1cm deep. If you like more it is fairly simple to increase the quantity by thirds.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 cup cornflour (cornstarch)
• 1 1/2 tsp citric acid 
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 3 egg yolks

Method

1. Put sugar, flour, citric acid and water into a saucepan and stir until combined.
2. Put saucepan over a medium heat and stir constantly until the mixture comes to the boil (it may go lumpy at first, but don't dismay, keep stirring and it will become smooth as it all cooks).
3. Remove from heat and whisk egg yolks thoroughly into the mixture.
4. Cover with cling wrap and chill in the fridge for 2 hours (not completely necessary, if you are short on time, but cool it a bit)

The Meringue
If you like lots and lots of meringue then by all means make more.

Ingredients

• 3 egg whites at room temperature (conveniently left over from the filling)
• 3/4 cup caster sugar

Method

1. Place egg whites in the bowl of a mixer and beat on a medium speed until firmish peaks form, but not till it's dry.
2. Add caster sugar bit by bit while still beating until it is all dissolved and you have a thick, glossy meringue mixture.

Now put it all together

1. Spread the lemon filling evenly over the base.
2. Top with meringue so that it joins the pastry all the way around and it mounds up in the middle.
3. Bake for approx 10 minutes or until the meringue is golden.

I think I have the worlds most poorly lit dining room.

Pie!

 If you want mini pies, use little tart tins. Unless you are making loads of them you will probably only need a third of the filling mixture. Excess pastry can be frozen and used at a later date. Just remove from the freezer and that at room temperature before trying to roll.

You Don't Make Friends With Salad

A tasty salad that you can make friends with.

...although I somehow seem to be able to. At least I used to when liberal spices and herbs were used, not to mention generous amounts of flavoursome fruit and vegetables, cheeses, croutons, cous cous and balsamic vinegar... Those were the days. Now, well, there is only so much cabbage a person can eat.

Once again this recipe was not devised by me, nor did I discover it. Way back at easter, my best friends family and mine were having our now-traditional autumn feast. On good Friday we got together at our place. I provided roast beef and vegetables and a divine pumpkin pie (I might post the recipe one day for salicylates challengers) and she provided the salad. The salad is also not devised by her, but she did google it and adapt it just for us.

The original recipe is a glorious ode to autumn and amazingly close to being failsafe. A few tweaks and you have a really tasty and quite healthy salad.

Quinoa Salad
Ingredients

• 1 cup of quinoa rinsed very thoroughly (essential to lose bitterness)
• 2 peeled and chopped pears 
• a 400g tin of chick peas drained, rinsed and (if you can be bothered) peeled*
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

Dressing

• 4 tbsp failsafe oil
• 3/4 tsp citric acid dissolved in 3 tbsp water
• 2 tbsp pure maple syrup
• salt to taste (it's not a really savoury salad, it just needs a little as a flavour kick)

Method

1. Put rinsed quinoa in a saucepan with 2 cups of water. Cover and bring to the boil. Gently simmer for approximately 20 mins or until all the water is absorbed and the quinoa is tender. Chuck it into a large salad bowl.
2. Mix all dressing ingredients together with either a whisk or shaken together in a jar. Pour half of it on the warm quinoa and mix it all through. Leave to cool to room temperature.
3. Throw pears chickpeas and parsley into the bowl and toss with remaining dressing.

And that is it. Easiest, tastiest, protein packed salad ever.

Variations
The original contained pecans so you could use some raw cashews.
Salicylates - Add a few handfuls of baby spinach leaves.

With the spinach

*The easiest way to peel chickpeas is to place them into a bowl of water and gently rub them between your fingers. The skins will fall away quite easily and if you leave it to sit in the bowl the skins will mostly float above the chickpeas and can be removed.

Just a Moment

Just a melting moment. Just a gluten free, dairy free, egg free, nut free melting moment. They are not healthy though. I once made the mistake of thinking that food that was free of all these things must be healthy. It's not. It's sugary and 'buttery' and oh so tasty.

The first time I made these free of everything I was unsure if they would work or how they would taste. But they are good, I mean really good. I eat gluten most of the time and these still taste good to me. Even in the gluten version you have to add cornflour to make them nice and short, so gluten free does that really well.

Just so you know, I am not really a developer of new recipes, especially when it comes to baking. I don't have the time to make something five times to get it just right and I don't have the money to waste on ingredients. I find recipes that look like they will be easily converted and go from there. I found the original recipe for these a few years ago and made them as special treats and afternoon teas. My son always loved them and he still loves them with all the substitutions. It works quite nicely with straight gram for gram substitutions which takes the effort out of it.

Melting Moments
Ingredients

• 250g nuttelex
• 55g (1/3 cup) icing sugar, sifted
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 310g gluten free plain flour, sifted

Filling

• 60g nuttelex
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 110g (2/3 cup) icing sugar, sifted

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Cream nuttelex, icing sugar and vanilla essence in a medium bowl with electric beaters. Add flour and mix with the beaters on the lowest possible speed until just combined and a soft dough forms. Lightly flour hands then roll the mixture into small balls. Place on the prepared baking tray with a little space around them. Use a fork to flatten each ball to about 3cm in diameter and 1 cm thick. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until cooked through. They should be just turning golden around the bottom edge. Cool on baking tray. Repeat with the remaining mixture.
3. To make the filling, beat the nuttelex and vanilla essence until soft. Add the icing sugar and beat until combined. Refrigerate until required.
4. To assemble biscuits, spread the base of a biscuit with filling and then join with another biscuit. Repeat with remaining biscuits and filling. Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
   
   
   

If you can have gluten and dairy check out the original recipe. I always halve the amount of vanilla in a recipe to reduce the salicylates and leave out pesky things like orange zest. You really can't go too far wrong with recipes as simple as these.

Another variant on this is to sprinkle them with some caster sugar before baking and leave the unfilled for lovely little short breads. Or you could add a tablespoon of carob powder to either the dough or the filling for something different.

I hope you enjoy these tea time treats.

Things go Wrong

Two weeks ago we were hit by that really enjoyable strain of flu that is going around. When I say we I really mean my son and to a lesser extent myself. My other half had the fortune of being interstate for work and was spared having to look after one sickie and one very active almost 3 year old while feeling close to death. Cooking was minimal. Dinner consisted of what I could find in the freezer that required little effort or my sons favourite "breakfast dinner".

Friday was different in that I needed to do some baking for a cake stall that was being run at school while there was an election taking place. I usually try to make a heap of stuff, but it wasn't going to happen, so I made an amazing white chocolate mud cake, some melting moments (half of which went in the bin burnt) and some biscuits on sticks. Then Sunday was Fathers Day and we had an amazing failsafe afternoon tea with my parents. I baked, my mum baked and I took tonnes of pretty photos of the food in the gorgeous afternoon sunshine. Then I was about to blog about all these lovely sweet cakes when I discovered that all the afternoon tea photos had disappeared from the camera. Fifty photos completely gone. All I have left is some photos of the biscuits from the day before. So now I blog biscuits.

My son has dubbed these "iced biscuits" for fairly obvious reasons. I had found a recipe which looked really good and tried it out only to find that the resulting dough is completely unworkable. I thought it may have been a gluten free thing, but my friend made them with normal flour and had the same problem - dough that you couldn't roll nor cut. I kept adding flour until it seemed right and this time I actually measured how much extra was needed to get the right consistency.  There is a fair chance that both you and the kids will really like these, so I wouldn't bother to make anything less than a double batch of these.

Iced Biscuits

• 100g nuttelex
• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/4 tsp vanilla (optional; the original recipe calls for lemon zest, so add a little citric acid instead if you like)
• 1 1/2 cups Gluten free plain flour
• natural sprinkles (optional)
• bamboo skewers (soaked for half an hour and with the sharp end cut off if you prefer)

Royal Icing

• 1 egg white, lightly whisked
• 1 1/2 cups pure icing sugar, sifted

1. Cream nuttelex and sugar together. Add egg and Vanilla (or citric acid). Beat to combine. Sift flour over mixture. Stir to combine (or if you have a stand mixer use a slow speed until dough comes together) Place dough onto plastic wrap. Knead gently. Shape into a disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in fridge for 30 minutes or until firm.
2. Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Line baking trays with baking paper. Roll dough out between 2 sheets of baking paper until 5mm thick (don't get carried away and roll it too thin as the biscuits will be too hard). Use whatever shaped cookie cutter you have to cut shapes form the dough. Press remaining dough together and repeat.  Place on baking trays (they don't spread very much at all, so feel free to put them close). If you are putting them on stick, carefully slide the skewer at least halfway into the dough. Bake for approx 10 mins (depending on the size of you shapes) or until golden. Stand for 3 minutes. Cool on a rack (biscuits firm up when they are cooling, so don't think they are not done because they are soft straight away).
3. Make icing. Place egg white in a bowl. Gradually add icing sugar, whisking until smooth. Spread over cookies. Top with sprinkles. Set aside for 20 minutes or until set.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   

   I think my camera is dying. Hence disappearing photos and photos of dubious quality (I can blame the camera for that this time).

   
   

   
   
   My son loves these and when I first made them I had to limit how many he had because of the sprinkles. So he told me not to put sprinkles on them all then, because it doesn't make them taste better (how very mature of him). In saying that, if you wanted you could use natural colours in the icing (be careful of salicylates) too.